the DL on the JOB

{Gadyen Dlo™, clean water for the Haitian family}

You might be wondering what exactly we are up to in Haiti.

Or you might be wondering just how Miss Lohan escaped The Law. Again.

Well, I can only offer a response to one of the two inquiries.

So, as you've read, we are currently interning with an organization responding to the water situation in Haiti, (which I'll be happy to address in a more focused sense some other time). This organization is unique in several ways and it has been really fascinating to work on another community-based-model of grassroots empowerment (BNEC shoutout!), only in a completely different context.

Many moons ago, DSI was born as the outgrowth of an undergraduate contest of some sort at a small liberal arts college in The States (it won!). Its vision was to holistically respond to the growing number of childhood deaths due to waterborne disease,  and in particular, the lack of clean water in Haiti.

3 years later, DSI is living, breathing, and growing rapidly.  It is sanitizing water through a small and committed group of employees (or 'water technicians') in a handful of communities in Haiti. Within each of these communities, these water technicians test the water in the family's household water system, and sell DSI's chlorine product (Gadyen Dlo™) to households at an affordable price when needed. The chlorine is then used to treat water (collected from whatever source available – water pump, spring, river) in their system (a 5-gallon bucket with a spicket). After allowing the chlorine 30 minutes in the bucket to do its thing, the water is safe to drink, to cook with, or to bathe in.

DSI's model is unique in that it is the only enterprise in Haiti producing its own chlorine in-country. It also seeks to be predominately run and operated by Haitians (except for us, but we're only short-term, and the founder/pres).  It gets better.  DSI's model is one that hopes to become financially sustainable, and thus thrive independent of foreign aid.  Wowzer.  And, perhaps most dramatically, it is providing an employment structure that benefits not only the technicians and their families, but their communities, into which much of that income will be retained and recycled into.

DSI is also heavily focused on increasing the health and sanitation literacy of communities and does so by responding to the requests of technicians for skills and educational trainings, the information of which is then passed along through word of mouth (HIGHLY effective here).


*Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DSI or any employee thereof. 


Don't I sound professional...

So, that's the DL from here. I'm learning a TON in the large and small.

Here's to hoping for the best... for you, for the people who have to work with us blans, and for Lindsey.

the 4 o'clock pick-me-up.

here's what our's looked like yesterday...

{notice the teenage girl, with little reserve, laughing at me}

{at least one of them is wearing a jetpack}

{boss man}

on our way home from meeting with several techs, the elements had their way with our plans. we had crossed a couple of ravines on the way to see them. they didn't look too threatening then. but on the way back, the sky was falling and the water was gushing.

we had no choice but to get across. i voted to do it on my own two. alliance said he had a Plan B.

i guess you can see what that was... would you believe that our motos had to be carried across these ravines behind us? and that we got piggy-back-rides, not once, but twice on the way home?

so, two piggy-back-rides, one hour on moto, 2 hours on a taptap school bus, one more hour on another taptap, and a ride from a kind stranger later, we made it home.

just another day in the life of Haitian travel. what did your 4 o'clock pick-me-up look like?

friday's storm.

you may have heard about this already.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The sudden, powerful storm that ripped through Haiti's battered capital destroyed thousands of tents in the homeless camps where more than 1.3 million people live eight months after the earthquake destroyed their homes, shelter officials said Saturday.

thousands of people won't sleep with a roof over their heads. and haven't had much of one for 8 months. it's ludicrous to imagine, really. we're fine, miles away from port au prince, and miles away from a reality like that. i. really. can. not. even. imagine.

my home is your home

within 5 minutes of arriving back in Ferrier, after a few weeks of travel, Mme St. Ville (the guesthouse mother) assured us that we would be taken care of while we are here and were to call the house our home and her our mother.

no problem.

guesthouse in Ferrier. isn't it dreamy? kitchen on the left. rest of house on the right.

a 'guesthouse' in haiti functions much like a bed & breakfast in the states (only much more relaxed) or a pension in europe (croatian shoutout!). it is generally a service provided by an institution (church, organization, etc.) and a hot product consumed by foreigners (travelers, ngos, etc).

i'm still not sure how to feel about it. the women who run the guesthouse (which also functions as an office out of which they use to run a child sponsorship program) are lovely. i mean, really lovely. the kind of people that smile for most of the day and engage you in conversation, mindfully dumbing down/slowing down their kreyol vocab and speech so that you can understand them...

but it still feels very uncomfortable to have 2 meals cooked for you a day, the table set, and the housekeeping responsibilities covered. we don't have to lift a finger.

but, in many ways, this is a standard set-up here. it supports the local economy. you can't do it all - work, clean, cook. but in many ways those all sound like cop-outs. i mean, why can't we do it all? everyone else seems to.

i suppose, we'll see how it goes. for now, i can breathe with dignity when i wash my own clothes and dishes. and when everyone who lives and works here gets to sit down together (and up until now, that has always involved the transferring of a skill - either us learning kreyol from someone, or someone learning english or computer skills from us which i really enjoy and is another post).

some really tasty things happen here: Haitian oatmeal, plantains of every make and model, fresh orange/grapefruit juice...

on the porch. nice to see you again, texas. 

anyhow, i have a feeling Mme St Ville will be eating her words soon. we novice Haitian tourists have eaten up quite a bit of her wisdom and expertise. sort of without reserve. but more on that and other misadventures later.

last week in pictures.

bonswa!

in lieu of lengthy anecdotes today, i offer you the week through the eyes of our collegue/pal, Alliance (we left stephen's monster camera at our base camp).  we beached. we trekked. we, uhh i,  fell down many times.

the beach at ft. liberte {only 20 min from Ferrier}

en route to our 1st stop. that's right. white sand. is this really haiti?

proof!

more proof! whoever said that rocks were an enjoyable massage tool clearly never stepped foot in this river. it took me at LEAST 20 minutes to get across. haitians? 4 minutes tops.

and what's better after a long day of travel? sitting in an empty bar listening to the black eyed peas on repeat... see? NOTHING to worry about, parents. {miguel, our 4th teammate, a water tech, yours truly, and newly cropped stephen}

ramblin's.

leogane (the home of our first temporary residence and DSI headquarters - also the place i first had a fried egg sandwich)

quick trip to the DR on a 'free day' (no border fee). we passed in Quanaminthe at Massacre River. {pictured L-R: Michael (pres of DSI), Nancy (community health educator), Alliance (our teammate), and Stevo}

Miguel, Michael, + Alliance (all-ee-ance)

It's been awhile. Half a liter (metric system, baby) of bug spray and a hundred oh-no-my-eyes-are-glazing-over-i-wish-i-understood-what-you-are-saying-oh-i-think-i-got-one-word conversations, and I am still kickin it and lovin life in Ayiti.

A minor recap and ramble of sorts:

Last Thursday we departed our Hilton-esque Homestead in Leogane and headed to a small town outside of Cap Haitien (or OKap, as the natives roll) via Port Au Prince. This means that we got to jet up via plane to the northside of the country. If we were to have taken public transportation or rented a taptap (a common form of privately-owned public transportation here, in addition to motos of course) it would have taken 10 hours by land. By air it took only 30 minutes. It felt like such a luxury. It was.

We landed in Cap and then headed to Tibo for our first real DSI event. I have finally found a grasp on what our role is here and what our objectives are (i'll save that for another time), but for now, feel free to peruse their website, at your leisure.

There was a 3-day Water Technician Training, last Monday-Wednesday, during which I did nothing but sit in the back, listen, and magically began to distinguish between words! It is really easy for 3 sentences to sound like one giant word in Kreyol (like any foreign language), but you can't imagine my brimming happiness as I began to recognize a few of them. Pre-Haiti Kreyol studying is paying off and actually being here motivates me to study everyday. I am sick of feeling so helpless and incapable of expressing any sort of meaningful emotion or thought.  So, we began formal Kreyol lessons with one of our teammates here yesterday. By the way, he is slightly of rockstar status. Speaks English, French, and Kreyol and used to be a Radio DJ. Clutch, in the words of J. Blackburn. You must meet him soon.

So, here we are in Ferrier (another small rural community in the North; this one near the Dominican Border; and the one I first visited in 2008) staying in a guesthouse, beautifully run and far smaller and quainter than our first location. It feels really good to be here, and we already got to visit some old friends here!

Monday begins our 3 week backpack-by-moto-and-taptap trip around the Northern part of the country. We'll be visiting all of the technicians that were at the Training in their hometowns. I'm thrilled to tour the country and still call it 'work'.

Who am I kidding? I'm a total tourist here. Boy, I hope that feeling fades.

N'a we yon lot jou (see you another day)!